When my mouth fails to move, the only recourse left is the keyboard beneath my fingers. Even then, I struggle with words. Even now, I’ve undone every sentence only to give up and try again tomorrow.

But it’s been too many tomorrows. And very few words.

So I’ve made up my mind to keep going. Committed to sharing this piece with you regardless of the errors or the complete lack of structure and imagery.

It feels crude that this is coming to you in prose. That it isn’t a poem filled with intertwining stanzas of metaphors to convey just how beautiful you are.

Sometimes it hurts just a little too much when you greet me in the morning. To see your blonde hair fall perfectly onto your forehead. To feel your hand cover my waist. To find comfort in your still, blue eyes. It aches just a little too much to wonder how someone like you still exists, here, with me.

It becomes a compelling argument for the existence of God. For only He would know how to create a man who could temper my fire. A man who could quiet the chaos that storms my mind.

A man who refuses to give up when every part of my body is fighting to leave this world. A man who has given me the gift of life.

As of late, I’ve cursed existence. I’ve tried to grab hold of the air that surrounds us as if to feed my anger and resentment. I’ve bathed in complete darkness even as the sun rose into the brightest of mornings.

And I’ve felt no better for it. To say I was left feeling emptier than before is too depressing of an understatement.

Should reality have set in sooner, I would have been humble enough to admit that in all of that angst, all I wanted was you.

That all I truly wanted was… you. To know that I’d never be alone. Neglected. Used. And taken for granted.

To know that your unexplainable baby scent would be there every single day. That your perfect feet would Tetris mine in bed every single night.

To hear your infections laughter fill the room. To fall asleep on your neck as you pick me up and rock me back and forth. To all the inside jokes and identical sense of humor. To our shared dreams and thoughts as if we were one person who could no longer be separated.

To the man I’ll be seeing as I walk down the aisle, I vow —

To find the strength to cast away the dread and the pessimism. To find courage in knowing we’ll be on this path together. To discover a love that is forever ours.

And just as I am tempted once more to erase all that has been written, I vow to let this stay and move forward.

On December 17, you asked me to be your soulmate.

We had a “night cap” and everything felt right again.

You asked if I would remember this moment. How could I ever forget this? It felt too good to be true.

We laughed all night about “Mary Barxsly”. And I don’t know the last time I cried from laughter. I just know you’re the only one who ever could make tear up from humor.

“I Like Me Better” by Lauv started playing in the background. You told me the song was us.

You said one day, you’d read this blog. That you’d never let this domain expire even if I passed from this world.

I cried too many times that night, both out of laughter and out of love.

“I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”

I think a small part of me feels like I don’t deserve this. As each day passes, my heart is filled with more love and so much more happiness. It’s incredibly cliché, but it’s almost as if I’m living a fairy tale I never knew existed. It’s “The Ugly Duckling”, “Beauty & The Beast” and “Pocahontas” rolled into one giant, weird and exciting relationship.

Blogging is tougher when you’re happy. The months roll on by; I’m living every moment, and I forget to come back here. I had this blog when we first met, and now here we are… still together after almost 6 years.

But… while everything has been as perfect as it could be, I’ve had the worst recurring dreams. I keep dreaming that this all never happened. I have nightmares about being in a past relationship and never meeting Paul. I know in the dream that Paul exists, but the dream is telling me I’m crazy. More often than not, I can lucid dream. I do what I want, nothing can hurt me, and I can wake myself up. With these, they’re different. I’m stuck. And I’m sweating. And when I finally wake up, I catch myself mid-scream.

Sometimes he’ll wake me up and bring me back to reality. Other times, I’m using my phone as a flash light to make sure he’s the one sleeping next to me. I keep thinking that maybe subconsciously I feel undeserving or that the universe is just playing a joke on me.

The only good to come out of those nightmares is that I am relieved every single time. And it’s a wonderful reminder that I should be cherishing every moment our relationship, through the best and worst times.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this blog, and I don’t know how to end it. He’s away on a 24 hour shift, and I just can’t wait to see him walk through the door in the morning. We’ll eat bacon and eggs, watch a movie from our list, and spoil our kitten with attention (I still need to blog about this kitten). And when night comes, I’ll be hoping these nightmares barely make an appearance.

While I absolutely loved my job as an apartment coordinator at UCLA (it’s actually still my favorite job I’ve ever had by far), I was glad that I wasn’t on duty that night.

I was on my laptop (probably browsing Reddit) when Tim asked if I had a spare vacuum bag. I must have recently visited the supply shop since I actually had a few to spare along with batteries and all the other essentials that we had to have. I was the type of person who dreaded the thought of getting called out for a beeping smoke detector and not having batteries.

About half an hour later, there was a knock on my door. Tim was getting ready to move out, and I was definitely a bit bummed by it. He was the first person I saw when I moved into the university apartments, who helped me with my paperwork, and ended up becoming one of my good friends. Well, when I opened the door, my spirits were instantly lifted.

Super cliché, but it was almost like one of those movie moments, where the protagonist first lays her eyes on the most handsome man in the room, and the scene gets all bright and you know the deal. So yeah, Tim introduces me to his best friend, his brother from another mother, Paul. And I don’t remember the last time I stood so close to someone so tall (6’5″), it made my reaction towards him even more ridiculous. Turns out Paul just landed into LAX that very night. He was gone for a couple months for EMT training in Phoenix, and he was only here to help Tim move out. Tim introduced me, noting I was the girl who played WoW. Paul perked up at that, asked me a few questions (possibly to confirm that I actually played), and I couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought he some surfer dude, probably a frat guy too, and someone who just wouldn’t have mutual interests with me. I later (~2012) admitted this stupid thought to him, and he just laughed, also conceding that he didn’t exactly believe my love for gaming.

The rest of my night was going to be absolutely uneventful, filled with more Reddit lurking, instant ramen, and if I was lucky, a good book. So I said screw it and asked if they’d ever played Settlers of Catan. Both of them hadn’t, and I told them we HAD to play!… even though Tim was literally moving out. They surprisingly agreed, and I changed out of my indoor dress into a red jacket and my yellow UCLA sweatpants.

Unfortunately, my memory gets a little hazy from there in terms of the exact order of events. I know we had to make a pit stop at Ralphs. We were looking around, trying to figure out dinner. I walked through the frozen aisle, trying to keep up with Paul, and he ruffled my hair, calling me shortstack. I grinned inside… maybe outside, too. Ralphs wasn’t looking too promising, so we decided on Subway.

It was about a 15 minute walk away, 20-25 if you really wanted to take your time and get to know someone. I wish I could remember all the things we talked about that night. It’s always funny looking back at the way you conversed with someone when you first meet them vs. how you talk with them now, especially if you’ve only gotten closer as time went on.

We get to Subway, and I order an oven roasted chicken breast footlong. Tim grabs a footlong, and Paul decides to go with a salad. We finally head over to Tim’s apartment in Landfair. He still has his apartment coordinator board up in front of his door. There’s a picture of him with all his friends, and Paul’s in it. A random tenant decided to draw a penis on it. I never noticed it before — the picture, not the penis.

We all take a seat and start diving into our food. I remember being absolutely ready to devour my sandwich. I hear Paul take a bite out of his salad and curse — says it’s the worst salad ever and he wishes he stuck with a footlong. I happily offer him half of mine, something I don’t normally do with just anyone. I was on a tight budget back then, and whenever I could afford to splurge just a little bit on “good” food, I made sure to appreciate every bit of it.

Settlers of Catan begins, rules are explained, and we end up playing for hours. I use an action card to obtain all the ore in players’ hands, and Paul was not happy about giving up at least 4-5 of his cards. Tim takes his time on every single turn, thinking out every possible move. And before we know it, when the game is over, the sun is getting ready to rise. I pass out on the couch, and Paul carries me to Tim’s bed.

They pack up and do everything necessary to get Tim moved out. I wake up a bit later, and they drop me off back to my apartment. Paul and I connect on Facebook about 3 days after. We start messaging and getting to know each other. The next time we hung out, I made the initiative to give him my number. I was sweating inside, hoping he’d actually accept it.

Before I knew it, we started having conversations until sunrise. Breakfast on the beach. South Park nights. and much, much more. It’s now been 5 years from that first day of meeting him, and I just can’t imagine how terrible my life would have been today if I didn’t have that vacuum bag.

I think I was in bed, being lazy. Sometime yesterday. I was facing the wall, on phone, browsing Reddit. He was on the computer, working on later surprising me with Elder Scrolls Online.

He called out to me, “I want to tell you something.” I looked over, his head was still turned to the computer. “I wasn’t sure about this before. You know, with where my relationship with you was headed. But with where we are now… I think I want to learn Tagalog.”

I could tell it wasn’t something easy to say. In the past, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to learn Tagalog – which was okay with me. I wasn’t going to force him to learn a language he didn’t necessarily need. After all, I do know English (I even majored in it).

But the way he said it, I felt something different. He doesn’t need to. He simply just wants to. Wait until my parents hear him speak it. That’ll be a glorious day, lol.

Jen: You know what one of my favorite N64 games is?

Paul: Banjo Kazooie?

Jen: What the f*. Banjo Tooie. How the hell did you guess that?!